


Applied Aeronautics

by websandwhiskers



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Family, Giftedness/Intelligence, Please Excuse the Technobabble and Suspend Disbelief on the Math, Pregnancy, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 09:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Aeronautics is the science involved with the study, design, and manufacture of flight-capable machines.” – Wikipedia article, ‘Aeronautics’<br/>*<br/>“You can know all the math in the 'Verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her home.” – Mal Reynolds, Serenity<br/>*<br/>A study of Kaylee, by way of Simon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Applied Aeronautics

 

“Got you something.” 

 

Kaylee looks up from the table and her cup of tea with a bright, eager smile; it slips a little when she sees what Simon is handing her. 

 

“It’s about -” Simon gives half a shrug, “ – ships and things. Engineering.” _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics._ It appeared to be a quarterly publication, which meant the month-old volume he’d found next to his medical journals in the cramped bookstore on Persephone was actually still new. Of course, even an older issue would have been new to Kaylee, but Simon didn’t want to bring her anything less than what he would have wanted himself. 

 

Kaylee flips through it. “There’s a lot a math,” she says doubtfully. “I mean – thanks,” she offers, stiltedly, giving him a forced little smile. “That was real thoughtful an’ all.” 

 

“I thought it might distract you,” Simon offers, thinking now that maybe one of the second-hand fashion magazines would have been a better idea. “How’re you feeling?”

 

“Bit more like my innards wanna stay innard,” Kaylee responds, smiling. “’Nara’s tea helps.” 

 

“Good,” Simon says, leaning down to kiss her forehead; she still looks too pale for his peace of mind. He tries very hard not to be jealous and resentful of Inara’s very useful tea. “I need to get my antibiotics into the refrigerator.” 

 

“We got fresh things for supper?” she asks hopefully, biting her lip.

 

“Eggs,” Simon responds. 

 

“Oh,” Kaylee says, and makes herself smile again.

 

“They’re better for you than processed protein,” Simon explains, beginning to feel a little desperate in the need to have done something right. “I looked for meat – for the B vitamins - but it all looked a little questionable, and the eggs . . . the eggs looked good,” he finishes lamely, realizing he has no idea what a bad egg would look like, anyway. He’d had in mind, in the market, the idea that they’d smell or be odd-colored or something, but now he’s not sure that’s right. 

 

“Eggs’re good,” Kaylee assures him, too cheerfully, and Simon decides that if he’s brought her bad eggs, he’ll just have to throw himself out the airlock. 

 

“No vegetables?” she asks, trying to make the question casual.

 

“I was thinking of you needing better protein,” Simon says, cringing, lacking quite enough nerve to say he hadn’t even looked. 

 

“Oh,” Kaylee says again, and stares down into her tea glumly for a moment, before she looks back up at him with that awful fake cheerfulness in place on her green-about-the-lips face. “I think it’s the wrong season here for green stuffs anyway. Probably you didn’t see’em ‘cause there weren’t none out.”

 

He’s reasonably sure there had been - he’d just been thinking on protein. Simon doesn’t say this.

 

“Go put your stuff away a’fore it goes bad,” Kaylee orders gently. 

 

“Right,” Simon agrees; she tilts her head up, and they kiss softly before he goes, just a brushing of lips. Hers feel warmer than usual.  _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics_ is left on the table beside her.

 

***

 

He’s surprised to find her reading it, later. She seems absorbed in it, curled up in a corner of the engine room with a blanket hiding the slight swell of her belly, hair falling into her face. 

 

They’re just leaving Beylix, Serenity’s belly full of scrap parts that he knows Kaylee will be eager to see. Simon thinks they’ve done well. Probably she would want to get started right away, despite the more than week-long jaunt to Ezra ahead of them. 

 

When Mal had first told them they had a scavenging job lined up, her face had lit up with pure, unadulterated glee. Her disappointment at not being permitted to hunt through the wreck-yards herself had been near palpable. She’s feeling better lately, but Mal still won’t hear of her leaving the ship when they’re on a job, won’t chance her being caught in any potential crossfire. Simon is thankful – he agrees, wholeheartedly, but is glad her ire is pointed elsewhere.  

 

The anger was short-lived, anyway, which Simon considers further proof that she is the most amazing person he has ever known. Kaylee very determinedly transmuted her frustration into giddy anticipation of the surprise of examining what they found; she wrote them lists and drew detailed sketches of the most valuable things. Her forced cheer was almost painful, at first, but gradually it became genuine. Simon knows she is looking forward to seeing the present contents of their cargo bay the way he remembers anticipating Christmas as a child. 

 

She looks peaceful and warm, though, and she’s reading the journal he brought her. Spare parts will keep, and it is the first time in three months that he can recall her looking truly well. He knew they were being less than careful, understood the possible consequences perfectly well, and is for the most part happy – but sometimes he wishes, ashamed of himself, that it had not happened so quickly. It’s too soon after Miranda – none of them have had a chance to heal. Before the pregnancy, Kaylee had become proficient at hiding her grief, but the first months were physically draining, and now it shows. She’s happy about the baby, more than happy, but it’s as if her excitement uses all the energy she has, and there’s a fragile, desperate quality to it. 

 

If she stirs, then she stirs, he decides, but he won’t intentionally break her reverie. 

 

He places a cup full of steaming stewed cabbage on the floor next to her. He’d brought it back wrapped in his jacket, burning his chest the first part of the way, but he thinks it’s still a little warm now. It is the dead of winter on Beylix, very much the wrong time for vegetables, but there was a street vendor selling this, and hot cider. He considered the cider, too, but remembered she wanted green things. It’s more of a sludgy brown than green, but it’s close, it’s the best he could find. 

 

She still doesn’t look up from _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics_ as he straightens and begins to tip-toe away, though her frown of concentration deepens and she reaches a hand up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear.

 

He’s at the door when the smell reaches her, and he hears her shifting in her blankets. He grins at her delighted, “Oh!”

 

***

 

“This don’t make sense.”

 

Simon glances up as he ducks in the door to their shared bunk, unbuttoning his waistcoat. Kaylee is seated cross-legged on their bed, _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics_ in her ever-decreasing lap. She’s frowning, and sounds frustrated. 

 

“What doesn’t?” Simon asks, sitting next to her.

 

“This.” She points at something on the page; Simon takes the journal from her and examines it. It’s a complex equation, far beyond his understanding. 

 

“I don’t know,” he says, handing it back to her. She continues to frown at it. He stands and continues to undress; she’s already in a little whisper of a nightgown, cotton so fine he can see through it, though the look of intense concentration on her face – all directed at the journal – would suggest he shouldn’t get too excited about the view. That journal has to do with engines, and between himself and engines, Simon knows where he stands. 

 

“I think it’s wrong,” she blurts out, sounding troubled, flipping pages to look at something else, a finger holding her initial place. “It just looks -” She shrugs disconsolately, throwing up her free hand. “- just _wrong._ ”

 

He leaves his boxers on and gets beneath the sheets, accidentally jostling her in doing so; she shimmies a little to the side to accommodate him, but remains perched atop the blankets, frowning. 

 

“But maybe I just don’t get it,” she goes on, in a much smaller voice. “It’s an awful lot a math. Ma didn’t teach us much math. Enough not to get robbed blind if’n we ever needed a bank loan, an’ that’s not really this kinda math at all.”

 

Simon reaches up and brushes her hair out of her face; she gives him a sideways glance, annoyed. He lets his hand drop away, and her scowl fades into a rueful smile. “Doesn’t really matter, I ‘spose,” she says, shrugging, putting the journal aside. 

 

“The man who wrote that article,” Simon says, “could not keep this ship in the air, I promise you.” 

 

She smiles widely at this, and bites her lip. “’Spose sayin’ things like that oughta earn you something,” she replies, giving him a teasingly appraising look that he knows very well. Simon says nothing, giving her wide innocent eyes. 

 

 Kaylee crawls awkwardly beneath the covers. She’s not quite comfortable with her changed body, and darts nervous, sideways glances at him as she pulls the nightgown off over her head. He reaches for her and, lacking the words to explain that she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, kisses her instead. 

 

***

 

“Could you get me somethin’?” Kaylee asks, when they land on Ezra. 

 

“What would you like?” Simon asks, and tries to remember what time of year it is there, whether there might be vegetables. Ezra used to be prosperous, under Niska, and is now struggling to maintain its footing in the Rim economy. Its trade is a disorderly jumble of every known commodity, legal and otherwise; it’s dangerous but profitable, and not a bad place to seek out the rare or exotic. It’s possible he could find her strawberries. 

 

“A book,” Kaylee says, quick and nervous. “A – a math type book?” Her voice tilts upward, though it’s not really a question – she knows what she wants, but isn’t sure she should be asking for it. “Like the kind of math that’s in that journal you bought me.” 

 

“You want a mathematics journal?” Simon asks, puzzled. 

 

“No, I mean like – a book for learning that kinda thing,” Kaylee says. “A school book, maybe?” 

 

***

 

He finds her a series of books, calculus and physics in various levels of complexity. Simon is nervous as he gives them to her, though she is equal parts delighted and petrifyingly determined. 

 

He knows she is brilliant, in her own way, but Kaylee has never had the benefit of a formal education and, as a veteran of that system, Simon knows that success there is as much about knowing its dialect and its customs and its private little dances as it is about the knowledge itself. It’s possible these books that she wants so badly will be gibberish to her, not for any lack of intellect on her part, but for lack of common language. 

 

When River grabs one of the volumes and say, “Oh, I remember this!” his stomach only sinks further.

 

***

 

“See this?” Kaylee bustles into the infirmary and hoists herself up onto a counter; she can still do that, belly and all. She looks so small and soft that the raw physical strength of her periodically astonishes him.  _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics_ is in her hands, the pages now smudged and crinkled and a little frayed about the edges, much handled. She’s pointing at something indignantly, so he peers over the top of the page to see what has her riled. “This, I thought I didn’t understand?”

 

“I remember,” Simon ventures carefully; he’s come to recognize this powder-keg state.

 

“It’s not that I don’t get it,” Kaylee pronounces, equal parts triumphant and offended. “It’s that it’s _wrong._ Wouldn’t happen that way at all.” 

 

“Ah,” Simon agrees, smiling, knowing he’s fortunate that she’s too focused in her righteous fury to notice the indulgent nature of his expression. 

 

She’s mastered doctoral level physics in a matter of weeks, with only occasional guidance from a very bemused River. He’s known for some time that on many levels she’s a great deal smarter than he is, but it’s slowly dawning on him that he hadn’t really taken her upbringing, her lack of education, into full account, in taking measure of her intelligence. It is now occurring to him that the mother of his child is something disconcertingly like River, though singular and focused in her genius. A prodigy. 

 

But she also wouldn’t know what the word ‘prodigy’ means, and at times, in the face of her ungrammatical giddiness, it’s hard not to condescend. He both loves her all the more and hates himself for this lingering feeling of superiority. That piece of himself he recognizes as his father, and wishes he could take a scalpel and cut it away, but can’t.

 

Most days she either doesn’t mind or doesn’t notice, which also makes her a better person than he is. 

 

“I thought it was just -” Kaylee waves at the magazine disdainfully. “Well they use all those fancy words and charts and ‘equations’ -” this said with a lilting sort of emphasis, like a word in a foreign tongue “- and well, these’re all _doctors_ an’ such, people what’re supposed to know more’n I do ‘bout pretty well everything, so – but it just didn’t _look_ right. I just _knew_ – this here -” she flips pages, stabbing a finger at a diagram of some bit of engine; it occurs to Simon, not for the first time, to try to imagine the innards of a ship like some sort of alien biology. Considered that way, as organs and physiology, it ought to make some sort of sense to him. 

 

It still doesn’t. Kaylee has given him almost as much reason to ponder the complexity of the human brain as has River; at times it’s hard to imagine they’re even the same species of creature, though the roundness of her belly proves it. A fearful sort of awe accompanies his every imagining of their increasingly visible child, whose very existence still strikes him as faintly ridiculous, unnatural, a miracle of Biblical proportions. 

 

“Yes?” Simon prompts, as he’s clearly meant to, from her expectant expression. 

 

“Compression decelerators don’t _do_ that,” she says, with a very satisfied finality. “And this guy here thinks he can make ‘em, and he’s got all these shiny numbers to say so, but, see, they just _don’t._ Just _won’t._ His high-falutin’ _adaptation_ thingie here-” She points again, at something shaped a little like a glomerulus “-it ain’t gonna work, and I figgered out -” More flipping pages, going back. “- River says I’m right, too, which’s pretty much the next nearest thing to God sayin’ so, so I’m sure a’ this -” Flip, flip, and a greasy finger jabbed sharply at an equation that goes far past Simon’s undergraduate comprehension of physics “- this right here? It’s total _go-se_ after the second line. He goes wrong here – see -” she looks up, eyes very bright.

 

He kisses her, just gently; when he pulls back she’s scowling. “I don’t see,” Simon admits, smiling ruefully. Her expression softens fractionally, but she’s still not entirely convinced he isn’t being dismissive of her. “But if River agrees, well, I would suspect it would break some law of the ‘verse for both of you to be wrong, and about engines.”

 

“It’s not an engine,” Kaylee says, though her lips are quirking up lopsidedly in her own version of tolerance. “It’s a compression decelerator, it’s part of the -” She stops at his patiently blank expression. “- well it works with the engine,” she finishes, shrugging, grin widening. “Keeps us all from blowin’ up every time we speed up.” 

 

“Ah,” Simon acknowledges. “That’d be a good thing to have functioning properly, then.”

 

“It sure would,” she agrees, bemused now, if faintly exasperated with him, reluctant to part ways with her indignation. Then a look of distraction flits across her features, and she tosses the magazine hastily aside and grabs his hand, pressing it hard to her belly.

 

“There he goes,” she exclaims breathlessly. “You feel it?”

 

He does, a rippling motion that makes him think of oceans. He has vague memories of his mother pregnant with River; maybe he was simply too young to understand, but he remembers her tired and sullen the entire time. He doesn’t think she was like this – her initial sickness having passed, Kaylee is thrilled and awed and radiant, a tiny grease-smeared goddess, her hands so very strong. 

 

So far as he knows, Kaylee has never seen an ocean; he means to correct that some day, but on some other world than the one where he and River played on the beaches. He wants Kaylee nowhere near his parents, ever.

 

Kaylee winces, drawing in a hissing breath through lips that still smile, responding to a particularly sharp kick from the little scrap of humanity within her – his, hers, theirs, impossible and terrifying incomprehensibly dear. “He’s gettin’ strong,” she says breathlessly. 

 

  
_Like his mother,_ Simon thinks, though he only smiles at her. 

 

At times he lays awake at night and just watches her breathe, and thinks on all the terrible, unspeakable things that had to happen to bring them to this place. It makes him feel guilty for his happiness, which perversely, only makes it the sweeter for being something stolen. It doesn’t seem right, and he sees the way Zoe watches Kaylee sometimes, as though just the sight of Kaylee’s swollen belly is a knife into Zoe’s gut. 

 

Kaylee’s never mentioned it, which doesn’t make him think she hasn’t noticed. He’s never mentioned that if River hadn’t been taken and abused, if he hadn’t needed to rescue her, they never would have met at all. 

 

The feel of his son moving with in her, primaeval as oceans, makes him think on a life where he never met Kaylee at all, where he is still at the hospital. Once there was a shameful longing in such thoughts; now there is a silently screaming, thrashing terror to it, the irrational fear that this so-improbable life could be snatched away from him at any moment, the ‘verse throwing them back to their assigned places and restoring the natural order of things. 

 

“Simon?” Kaylee says, smile slipping and brow furrowing; his thoughts must have come through on his face. 

 

“I love you,” he says, and leans in to kiss her again, but she puts up a hand between them and frowns. 

 

“You get all melancholy on me whenever something reminds you a’ the baby,” Kaylee pronounces. “You’re not – you’re not thinkin’ on – you’re happy ‘bout this, ain’t you?” 

 

Simon just blinks at her, floored, and calls himself a fool in every language he knows for not realizing how she might misunderstand his quietness. 

 

“I know sometimes men get weird ‘bout babies,” Kaylee rushes on. “’Bout having a family and responsibility and all that, makes you feel trapped or tied down or some such, I know, I got brothers – my little brother got a girl in a family way when he was just sixteen, and he did right by her, but it made him miserable, and I wouldn’t ever wanna -”

 

“I am so happy,” Simon cuts her off, taking both her hands in his and kneeling down in front of her, in the tiny awkward space between the counter and the surgical chair. She quiets, watching him, and he hates that he could have been responsible for her feeling a moment’s doubt. “I am so happy that it makes me afraid.”

 

She ponders this silently for a moment. “That don’t make a whole lotta sense,” Kaylee says eventually, slowly, “but it kinda does, I guess. I suppose I can see that.” She blinks at him, then swats his shoulder. “And get up.”

 

He does, grabbing _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics_ from the counter as he rises. He hands it back to her. “You should write a letter to the editor, tell them what’s wrong with that decompression . . thing.”

 

“Compression deceler – what?” Kaylee cuts off her reflexive correction to stare at him, aghast. “I couldn’t do that!”

 

“Why not?” Simon asks, brushing non-existent dirt from his knees as an excuse to look down and hide the grin that appears on his face at her astonishment. The tension of the previous moment has passed, leaving him a little giddy, and he recalls – without the slightest pang, which is itself still a little odd – the fiercely competitive atmosphere of his university years. Her quick indignation would have served her well, had she ever pursued an education; her humility would not, but he adores it anyway.

 

“Because – because I don’t know how to talk like that!” Kaylee retorts, gesturing with the magazine in a way that’s almost panicked. Simon feels a little bad, but not enough so as to let it go. 

 

“You know what you’re talking _about_ ,” he presses, “which is more than can be said of a good half of all published academics. I’ll edit for you if you want – just grammar and such. The mathematics would be completely over my head.” 

 

“I can’t write to some fancy Core journal,” Kaylee protests once more, but it’s weaker now, and there’s a certain glint in her eye. She pushes down off the counter to stand before him.

 

“It could be that no one else has seen the flaw you found,” Simon suggests. “There could be a ship manufacturer implementing that technology right now. Building ships with it.”

 

“But it wouldn’t _work_ ,” Kaylee protests, brows unevenly quirked and sounding pained. “They run _tests_ an’ things.”

 

“Clinical trials have only so much relevance to actual practice,” Simon responds very primly. “There’s _that_ much overlap in our disciplines, at least, that I can venture an opinion there.” 

 

“I only understood about three words a’ what you just said,” Kaylee insists, crossing her arms between breasts and belly.

 

“You did not,” Simon counters mildly. 

 

Her shoulders slump. “Well I can figure it out,” she concedes. “Ain’t the same.”

 

“No, it’s indicative of a great deal more natural intelligence than is comprehension based on having been spoon-fed a proper education since birth,” Simon retorts. “Didn’t you say that decomp -”

 

“Compression decelerator,” Kaylee interrupts, with an exaggerated scowl that says she knows his mangling of terms is deliberate at this point. 

 

“ – that it keeps the ship from blowing up?” Simon finishes. “You don’t want people blowing up, do you?” 

 

***

 

“They printed it,” Simon pronounces, holding out a somewhat bedraggled, second-hand copy of the newest edition of _The Journal of Applied Aeronautics._  


 

“Nuh-uh,” Kaylee protests, pushing herself up from her seat on the cargo bay stairs with some difficulty. “They didn’t.” 

 

“They did,” Simon insists, gesturing for her to take the magazine, which she does, very gingerly, as if it might bite. “It’s on page -” She’s already got it open, flipping rapidly, and then stopping. Her eyes go round. “-six. They copied your equations and everything.”

 

"Lao tyen yeh," Kaylee whispers, staring very hard at the page. 

 

“Now you wait and see if the original author replies,” Simon tells her, grinning. “You could end up embroiled in quite the scholarly debate.” 

 

“I don’t wanna -” she stops, grimacing, and puts a hand to her back. 

 

“Well you wouldn’t have to keep responding,” Simon offers, frowning at her look of distress. Her frown only deepens. 

 

“Simon,” she says, voice very tiny, “take this.” She holds the journal out to him with a hand that’s trembling. 

 

“What’s wrong?” Simon asks, snatching the journal away and tossing it haphazardly onto a nearby crate. Her other hand goes also to her back. “You don’t have to do anything – I won’t even buy the next volume if you don’t want it. I just thought -”

 

“I feel funny,” she interrupts, voice a high, frightened whisper, then gasps, and there’s a dark wet stain suddenly spreading down the legs of her jumpsuit. 

 

***

 

“Hoban really is a kinda awful name,” Kaylee says. “Derrial, too.” 

 

They’re alone in the infirmary – Simon, Kaylee, and the tiny dark-haired being who still lacks a name. Simon can’t take his eyes off him. He’s three weeks early entering this ‘verse, tiny, but strong. Right now his mouth is latched onto his mother’s breast and his miniature, curled fist is tucked up beside his cheek. His eyes are the typical deep blue of all newborns, still a mystery, staring up into his mother’s face. They don’t quite focus. 

 

“I ‘spose Mr. Universe had a name,” Kaylee ventures, after a long moment of quiet. “Never knew it, though. Can’t really call him ‘Verse.”

 

It seems entirely fitting to Simon, though he suspects his son wouldn’t thank him for it, in a few years. 

 

“Whadda you think?” she asks. 

 

“I spent some time on the ‘net,” Simon ventures. “Looking up baby names. I thought you were settled on Hoban, though.” 

 

“Was,” Kaylee says, and nothing else, but her eyes are fixed on the downy little head. “Didn’t tell nobody but you, though, so . . we can change that. Wouldn’t hurt . . anybody.” 

 

Simon wonders if Zoe expects it, and hopes not. He says anyway, “What do you think of Matthew?”

 

She thinks a moment. “Sounds old,” she says, but not like this is a bad thing. “From the Bible and all, innit? Book’d like that.” She brushes her fingers across their child’s dark hair, tentatively, as if almost afraid to touch him. He makes a small, muffled sound. “It mean anything in particular?”

 

“Gift,” Simon responds. “It means gift.” 

 

***


End file.
